by Kelly Meding
Normally, an order like don’t engage will rile me up enough to do just the opposite. Only we’re sans weapons of any kind, and the Halfies have at least twenty other people to use as human shields if we get frisky. Human shields they could turn into more Halfies with one little bite.
At the next stop, several people get off. Felix sits in the closest empty seat. The route appears to be taking us into Mercy’s Lot.
Milo jumps, then fishes his cell out of his pocket. “They’re behind us, following,” he whispers as he puts it away again.
Two stops later, we’re down to eight civilians, plus the driver. Milo and I take seats across the aisle from each other, Milo just behind Felix. As the driver reaches to pull the door shut, a familiar face slips on board. Marcus doesn’t look at any of us as he drops his coins into the meter, then takes a seat near the rear, between us and the Halfies. The odds are a little more even, and Marcus has the added bonus of being Therian and immune to the vampire parasites that turn humans into raving Halfies. Not to mention that, according to Tybalt, Marcus can shift into a huge-ass jaguar.
We’re traveling north, into the outskirts of Mercy’s Lot, and the stops will likely become fewer and farther between. Getting off with the Halfies is going to look suspicious no matter what we do.
One of them, a stocky boy in a ratty denim jacket, breaks off and shuffles to the front of the bus. The girl he was hanging on steps closer to where Marcus is sitting, her too-red lipstick smeared across her lips like blood. My stomach knots. This isn’t going to be good.
Denim Jacket pulls a handgun out of his coat and presses it to the bus driver’s temple. I tense, heart hammering. Someone behind me gasps, then shrieks, catching the attention of the other passengers.
“Turn left up here,” Denim Jacket says.
The driver, an elderly man who’s probably seen it all and then some, merely nods. He won’t be playing hero today.
“Anyone who wants a bullet in their fuckin’ head,” Denim Jacket says to the entire bus, “please try and fuckin’ stop me.”
Someone begins sobbing rather loudly, but no one speaks up. DJ has the gun; DJ has the power. Too bad he doesn’t know who four of his hostages are and what we’re trained to do. We just need to get that gun away—
A peal of laughter from the rear of the bus drags my attention behind me. The other Halfie male has a second gun, and he seems far less stable than his buddy. It’s bizarre to see the quartet acting as if they’ve actually planned this.
The idea makes me ill.
I take stock of the eight civilians. All between twenty and thirty years old, give or take. All in relatively good shape, probably decent health. Are the Halfies hunting for food? Or something else entirely?
Old instincts have me turning to ask Wyatt his opinion—only he’s not here.
The driver follows directions, taking us off the bus route and into a partially abandoned part of the Lot. We pass a defunct Burger Palace building—I’ve been here, months ago. Road traffic is thin, foot traffic almost nonexistent. If the car with Marcus’s team is still following us, they turned their headlights off and are keeping a good distance.
“We should fucking do something,” a voice behind me whispers. Male, angry.
I turn around just far enough to give him a deadly glare and mouth “no” with as much emphasis as possible. He’s in his late teens, bulked up, probably a high school wrestler who thinks he can be badass against a couple of stoned punks and their girlfriends. And he looks just stupid enough to get us all killed.
Stupid wins—he lurches sideways at DJ’s girl. Hoping to get her into a headlock and threaten a man with a gun? I have no idea, and it doesn’t matter. Red Lipstick snarls and punches Stupid in the nose before he can rise halfway out of his seat. He drops back down, howling, clutching his bleeding nose.
At the head of the bus, DJ growls. Someone in the middle of the bus sobs.
“Looks like someone thinks he’s a hero,” DJ says, baring his fangs for the first time. Gasps rise from the other passengers. He levels his gun at Stupid. “I look forward to tasting you.”
Stupid grunts behind his hands.
DJ angles his wrist sideways and squeezes the trigger. His gun roars.
Milo cries out.
The bus driver jerks the wheel and hits the gas. I tumble out of my seat and into the aisle. Passengers are screaming, and then the entire bus tilts. Tumbles. I crash into someone, then a seat, a window. Metal shrieks. Maybe me, too, until everything comes to an abrupt, crunching halt.
Someone’s beneath me, or maybe they’re on top of me; I don’t know whether I’m upright or not. My jaw aches. I smell blood, rubber, gasoline—not good smells. The snarl of a large cat precedes a piercing shriek. Someone kicks my leg, and then the world seems to focus again.
The bus is on its door side, its passengers trapped in a dark maze of broken glass and bus seats. People are moving around, panicking. My first thought is for the Halfies and who they’re about to bite. My next is for my hands, pressing down on something warm—blood. Shit.
Milo’s beneath me, clutching his abdomen. His eyes are open, wide, a little dazed, even in the faint light seeping in from outside the wrecked bus. He looks at me, then past me. His eyes widen.
I twist and bring my right arm up, driving my fist hard into DJ’s gut. He grunts and steps back, trips over someone (Felix, I realize), and lands on his ass. I grab a shard of glass and tackle DJ. Slam him flat on his back and drive the glass into his Adam’s apple. Blood spurts from his mouth and throat. It splashes my shirt and neck. I press deeper, aware of the glass slicing my palms, cutting halfway through DJ’s throat before he quits fighting.
“Evy!”
A body hits me from behind before I can figure out who shouted, and I fall forward into DJ. I shove against the weight on me, praying that my skin stays far away from anyone’s bare teeth, and twist. I may have survived an infection a few weeks ago, but I don’t want to go through that particular hell ever again, thank you. The screeching female on my back—Red Lipstick, I think—digs her fingernails into my chest.
I drive my head backward and am rewarded with a solid crunch of cartilage. They never protect their damned noses. Passengers are still screaming, trying to climb out the windows that are now our roof. Marcus is in the back of the bus, in jaguar form, battling the other pair of Halfies with swipes of massive paws and loud hisses.
Felix is on his feet, seeming unsure if he should help me, help Marcus, or help Milo. I pull Red Lipstick’s nails out of my skin and give her another head butt for good measure. The back of my skull aches and my chest stings, but the human-sized tick isn’t sucking my blood.
At least half the civilians are out.
Marcus throws his Halfie male halfway across the bus, knocking down several other freaking-out passengers like a hellish bowling ball down a lane of human pins. The Halfie lands and rolls, coming up next to Stupid, who’s helping a woman climb out a window. Halfie lurches at Stupid. Milo grabs the Halfie’s leg and yanks.
The Halfie growls and reaches for Milo. Felix tackles the Halfie with a shout, and the pair goes tumbling over a seat and out of sight.
Lacking other weapons, I select another large shard of glass and give Red Lipstick the same tracheotomy I gave her late boyfriend. The thick odor of blood sours my stomach. Gross.
Familiar voices shouting outside—our backup has arrived. Awesome.
Stupid once again tries to be a hero by jumping onto the back of the Halfie who’s fighting with Felix. He latches on like a monkey, arms around the Halfie’s throat, and the two tumble sideways onto the glass-strewn floor/side of the bus. All I can see of Felix are his legs.
Apparently finished with his Halfie, cat-Marcus lopes over and hisses in Stupid’s face. Stupid smartly lets go of his hostage. Marcus clamps bone-crushing jaws down on the Halfie’s throat, finger-thick teeth piercing skin. He snaps the Halfie’s neck with a jerk of his own.
I stumble over to Milo, who’s
twisted halfway around trying to get a look at Felix. “Hold still and keep pressure on that,” I snap. The sound of my own voice startles me. It was a strangely silent battle, save the shrieks of the civilian passengers.
“Felix,” he says.
“I’ll check on him, just stay.” Adrenaline has me shaking. My heart’s pounding hard enough to crack a few ribs. I grab Stupid’s arm and yank him down. “Put your hands on that wound and don’t you fucking let go, you hear me?”
Stupid nods, and he puts enough pressure down to make Milo cry out. He’s losing blood, but not life-threatening amounts, and I want it to stay that way.
Marcus is making the rounds, sniffing the bodies. I’m positive that whoever’s outside is making sure none of the escaped passengers was bitten. I haul ass to my feet and pick my way over to Felix. He’s curled on his right side between the seats, arms tucked beneath his chin, eyes shut. His jaw muscles twitch, eyes moving beneath the lids. The pose sends a chill racing down my spine.
“Felix,” I say, shaking his ankle. “Felix, are you bitten?”
“Fuck.” The single word is as much an answer as a prayer. “Fuck, fuck, fuck …”
Bile scorches the back of my throat and I swallow it down, suppressing the rising tide of panic. Not again. I can’t watch someone else I care about turn into one of those fucking things. I won’t. “Let me see, Felix.”
“Evy?” Milo shouts. “Is he okay?”
“Felix, let me see,” I say, ignoring Milo.
The eye I can see rolls again, then the lid peels open. I don’t remember what color Felix’s eyes were, but they shouldn’t glimmer with an opalescent sheen. And it cements my greatest fear. My stomach flips and threatens to empty. Tears sting both of my eyes. Shit.
I choke. “Goddammit.”
“Evy! Is he—?”
Felix snarls and lunges.
Chapter Twelve
Saturday, July 26
6:20 A.M.
Watchtower
Voices drew me out of a nice, quiet place, and I wanted to tell them to shut the hell up, only I couldn’t. My mouth felt dry, stuffed with cotton, and getting it moving took way too much effort. I considered going back to sleep for a while and ignoring whatever urgent crisis was likely unfolding around me, but someone squeezed my hand and said my name.
No one ever let me sleep.
I peeled one eye open, then the other, blinking up at Milo’s concerned face. He leaned down, staring so intently that I croaked out a “What?”
“Just checking,” he said.
“For?”
“You were, uh, drenched, Evy.” He blanched, a little green around the edges. This close, I saw the red lines webbing his eyes and their general puffiness. “We had to make sure it didn’t infect you.”
Drenched in what? I tried to sit up, only to find my wrists restrained. Panic hit like a cold slap, and I lunged, nearly clipping Milo’s chin with my head. I was on a cot somewhere, handcuffed to the frame, my clothes soaked, and I had no idea what … Felix. He exploded in our jail.
“Get these damned things off me,” I said.
“Calm down, I’ve got the key.” Milo unlocked my wrists, then scurried back away.
I sat up and swung my legs over the side of the cot. The room tilted. My head spun a little and I gripped it in both hands.
“Sorry, but we had to,” he said.
“I know.” My back ached, probably from being thrown by the explosion I only vaguely remembered. And I was moderately grateful that I’d been hosed down. I’d never seen a person explode from the inside out and did not want to see the gore left behind in the interrogation room.
We were in one of the infirmary patient rooms, and the sounds of nearby voices hadn’t diminished. People were talking, lots of them, but too far away and too many at once to distinguish individuals or actual words.
“Was anyone hurt?” I asked.
“You and Marcus took the brunt of it,” Milo said. His voice was cold, emotionless, like he was trying his damnedest to not lose his shit. “Dr. Vansis pulled some shrapnel out of your back, and Marcus took a big chunk in his left ankle.”
“Shrapnel?”
“Mostly wood from the chair. Some, uh, bone.”
I twisted my arm backward, poking at the source of the ache, and found a taped-down square of gauze. “Marcus is okay?”
“Stitched up and grumpy as ever. He saved your life.”
“I’ll be sure to thank him. How are you?”
He lifted one shoulder in a half shrug. “I was in the outer office. I wasn’t hit.”
“Not what I meant.”
His expression cracked and a flash of grief and horror made it through. Then he blinked, and a perfect mask of anger settled back into place. “A half-Blood exploded in front of me. Not an image I’ll soon forget, but we’ve got way worse problems now.”
“Such as?” Hey, wait a minute—“How’s Wyatt?”
Milo frowned. “Sedated, I think. You were out for only about twenty minutes, so I don’t think Dr. Vansis knows anything about his condition that you don’t already know.”
“Condition? What’s that mean?”
Dr. Vansis stepped into the cubicle, his customary scowl in place. “It means I still don’t understand the reason for Mr. Truman’s rather violent reaction to the Lupa blood and/or saliva,” he said. “I’ve made a formal request to the Assembly for information. Hopefully, they’ll have something more useful for me than speculation and hearsay.”
“So he’s still sick?”
“Extremely sick, unlike you.” He took a penlight from his lab coat pocket and flashed it in my eyes as he spoke. “He’s running a one-hundred-and-four-degree fever, has the shakes, complains of flulike aches all over his body, and both wound sites show signs of serious infection. I have him on IV fluids and a broad-spectrum antibiotic, but I don’t know that the antibiotic is helping.”
I followed his finger with my eyes, feeling like an idiot but understanding the reason for the little tests. I’d taken yet another blow to the head and, healing ability or not, he was a studious doctor. “All that from werewolf bites,” I said, once he seemed satisfied with my condition.
“The bites or the blood, I’m not sure yet,” Vansis said. “All of our knowledge of the Lupa is carefully guarded by the Elders. Hopefully, I’ll hear from them soon.”
“What about the vampires? They’re old. Isleen is centuries old. Maybe they know something.… What?”
The look Milo and Dr. Vansis exchanged set my teeth on edge.
“All the vampires in the Watchtower are being quarantined in their quarters,” Dr. Vansis said.
I couldn’t have been more surprised if he’d said they were staging a musical production in the cafeteria. “Why?”
“Because the purpose of detonating that half-Blood you captured wasn’t to cause internal structural damage to the facilities, or to necessarily try to kill whoever was standing closest to him at the time.”
“So why, then?”
“The half-Blood was used as a delivery system for some sort of pathogen,” Dr. Vansis said. “It was aerosolized during the explosion, and many of the vampires have become infected.”
“How many were exposed?”
“All of them.”
Oh God. The sun rises around 5:45 in the summer, and the majority of our vampires patrol at night. Even the vampires who used that fancy UV-blocking sunscreen preferred nighttime, as it enhanced their vision. They were always back by 5:30. Felix had known that. He’d known exactly when the most vampires would be in the Watchtower because he’d once been part of this, which meant that Thackery would have known the perfect time to blow his little present.
Walter Thackery and his hatred of all vampires strikes again. “Isleen?”
“She’s sick, as is Eleri and at least twenty more.” At least twenty out of the forty-five or so who worked here on any given day.
No, no, no, no! “Quince?”
“Fine, so far,” Milo sa
id. “It’s affecting them randomly. So far there’s no way to know if they’ll all get sick, or if some of them are immune.”
“I’ve taken blood samples from a dozen, both sick and healthy,” Dr. Vansis said, “but contagious diseases is not my area of expertise. And seeing as how you’re fine, I need to get back to work.”
He left without further information. I hauled ass to my feet, and my very wet shoes squished on the floor. Pink water oozed out.
“Have any humans or Therians been affected by this pathogen?” I asked.
“Not so far,” Milo replied.
“What’s it doing to the vampires?”
“Hypersensitivity to light and sound, shooting pains in the extremities, and they bruise if you touch them too hard.”
Sounded like the vampire version of a migraine—except for the bruising thing. “And these are just the early symptoms?”
“Yeah. Like I said, it’s only been about twenty minutes, but the first ones infected got sick fast.”
“If they aren’t all sick, is putting them in one confined space a good idea?”
Milo shrugged. “It was Isleen’s decision. She called her Family’s royal Father and he agreed with her. I guess they don’t want to risk exposing any vampires outside the Watchtower until they know what this is.”
The choice was understandable, from the vampire’s point of view. We didn’t know what was affecting them, what else it would do, or how far it would spread un-contained. Still … “Are we allowed to leave, or are we confined, too?”
“I really don’t know, Evy.” A flash of distress creased his forehead, and he looked lost. Young. “I mean, I just saw Felix blow up and I’m really not sure … I don’t …”
“I’m sorry.” I took a step toward him, then stopped when he flinched away. “It’s not easy to reconcile the thing you saw die with the person you knew.”
“Yeah. He seemed surprised.”
“That he’d been rigged to blow?”
“Yeah.”
“I think he was. He said something about his tracker not being a tracker. And I don’t think he expected to be caught last night.”